Taqlid means imitation — following a path simply because it is the inherited path, without testing it. Iqbal saw in it the single deepest cause of the decline of the civilisation he was born into: not a lack of resources or numbers, but a habit of mind.
A people in decline, Iqbal observed, stops generating its own thought. It copies — its past, or its conquerors — and mistakes the copying for loyalty or for progress. The borrowed life feels safe and is in fact a slow death; the imitator is always a step behind, never the author of anything.
The cure is the diagnosis reversed: reclaim original thought, reclaim Khudi, dare to be the source rather than the echo. The warning is not only civilisational. Any person can live by imitation too — and Iqbal would ask, gently and insistently, whether the life you are living is genuinely yours or merely inherited unexamined.
See it in the verse
Tumhari dastan tak bhi na hogi dastanon mein
Manzil yahi kathin hai qaumon ki zindagi mein
Ki main is fikr mein rahta hoon, meri inteha kya hai